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On June 19 in the Erebuni Plaza Hotel at the initiative of the RA NA Standing Committee on Defense, National Security and Internal Affairs and by the support of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) an international seminar "Parliamentary Oversight of the Police" was held.

In his opening word the Committee Chairman Koryun Nahapetyan has highlighted the role of the police reporting and the parliamentary oversight in the democratic society, which is an important precondition for the effective activity of the police, the protection of human rights and reaching to minimum the corruption risks. To his assessment, tangible reforms have been made in the recent years in the RA Police, which among many things are conditioned by the effective cooperation of the legislative and executive bodies and by the consistent use of the international experience. He has informed that representatives of the legislative, executive bodies and the civil society take part in this international seminar, international experts well aware of the problems of the sphere are also invited, who will introduce their approaches of making continuous the reforms in the police system and the experience of different countries. Koryun Nahapetyan called on the participants of the seminar to actively take part in the discussions.

Eden Cole, Head of Newly Independent States Programme of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, recorded with satisfaction that as a result of active cooperation of the Geneva Centre, the RA National Assembly, the RA Police and the OSCE Yerevan Office reforms had been made in the sphere of security, which had more increased the necessity of the parliamentary and the civil oversight. He touched upon the main concepts of the parliamentary oversight of the police, the complex structures, the most important challenges, the problem of creating independent bodies of appeal and the mechanism of the evaluation of the oversight results.

Timothy Parsons, Professor, Senior Lecturer in Policing and Criminology at the John Grieve Centre for the Community Security and Police of the London Metropolitan University, deemed as an important function of the police the protection of the citizen and his/her fundamental rights, hence, considered admissible the direction of the reforms, which would result in the formation of the pro-community system and the active cooperation of the police with the population, making decisions which will be delegated by the citizen. According to the speaker, to reach all this, first of all, the gap existing between the police and the society should be eliminated and be provided the transparency of the work, we should change the priorities and means of fighting the criminality, as far as possible we should rely not on the use of force, but on the mechanisms of negotiations and leveling the existing contradictions and provide the accessibility of the data. To his evaluation, the activity of the police is more effective, when the legislative and executive bodies, the police and the society come to a common agreement. He considered prior the support and confidence of the society in the implementation of the effective police service. Vic Hogg, Member of External Reference Group of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate Constabulary of Great Britain, presented the experience of the police parliamentary oversight in Great Britain, and Slaviša Šćekić, Security and Defence expert-adviser at Parliament of Montenegro, introduced their experience. They touched upon the peculiarities of the legislative and oversight functions of their parliaments and highlighted the circumstance of having an independent oversight body.

During the seminar the participants also touched upon the parliamentarians’ main problems, the role and obligations of the parliamentary committees, police service and the executive bodies, the problems of separation of the work between the agencies, the platforms of the civil society involvement in the management and oversight of the sphere and the monitoring tools.

The speakers also answered the participants’ questions, which related to the policeman’s authorities of making their own decisions, the necessity of regulating their limits with legal norms, the mechanisms of the implementation of the parliamentary and the civil oversight and the international experience of the regulation of the sphere.